No, I didn't drop off the face of the earth. I'm alive and doing...well. For those who didn't notice I haven't been posting recently, and for those who don't care... don't say anything. I have a very fragile ego
I picked up a Carcano a while back and finally got some ammo and got to shoot it. Tied it to a log and fired off one round. No sign of problems so I took it to the range today and burned off the remaining 19 rounds. Now I'm out until I find some more or get the dies and start reloading for it.
The Norma ammo seemed to kick a little harder than I anticipated. Maybe when I reload I'll tone it down a bit.
When I first tried to fire it off the log it only dimpled the primer without firing it. I replaced the spring with one from a sporterized Vetterli (still in rim fire) and now it fires every time. But I need two strong men and a small boy to help me pull the trigger! Does the main cocking spring also control the trigger pull? I'll have to play around to get the right tension spring. I read on the Swiss Rifles forum a reference to using Large Pistol Primers to solve the problem of a too light spring sometimes failing to fire the primer.
I think the sights were set for somewhere in the next county! At first I couldn't see where my shots were going at all but finally found them way high and quite a bit right. Once I started aiming at the bottom of the paper between the two bottom targets I was able to put all (well almost all) the remaining shots on the target above and to the right, with most of them in the white. That's like 15" high and 6" right. Do you suppose there is a way to mount a (removeable) pair of sights without disturbing the original ones? Something like a scope but I'm thinking either iron sights or a peep sight and bead.
I'm also . . . starting . . . to have some progress with the centerfire converted Vetterli I got from a member here (
thanks SW
). I finally found some 348 ammo and some 8mm Lebel. A fellow member at the club was accomodating enough to shoot the 348 so I could have the brass. Now I discover I don't have the right dies to convert that brass to .41, or even to pop the spent primers out!! And the Lebel? I tried fire-forming but used much too little powder. In about a third of the cases not even enough to blow out the inert filler, although it did fire all the primers. Now I have 20 Lebel cases that didn't fireform, AND I don't have the proper dies to even deprime those!
However, on the plus side, I've actually started to reload (you wouldn't believe how long I dithered over that). Found a couple of load/bullet combinations that work for my 32-40 and also for my 7mm Chilean Mauser. Still have to fiddle a bit to get a combination that is truly satisfactory, but that's half the fun of handloading!
Once I'm happy with a smokeless load for the .32-40 I'll try a black powder loading
I also read that the .30-30 can be converted to .32-40 and tried running one through the .32-40 dies with lots of lube and it worked, although the case is maybe 1/4" short. Might be a problem seating the bullet in the short neck. Probably I shouldn't use these in the tube magazine, just single shot them.
I also learned you can break a de-capping rod trying to remove a Berdan primer from old .303 brit cases. I heard that somewhere... Yeah, yeah, that's how I learned that.
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FAQ
The hard trigger pull might have a lot to do with trigger/sear interface geometry. A little judicious stoning = go slowly/cut & try might improve things. The spring does factor in. A lighter spring will give a lighter trigger pull. The trade off here is that primer ignition could suffer as mentioned.
